See how the extremes in morals and legislation met during the few years of English history covering the Protectorate and the Restoration. Puritanism and liberty of conscience, whose exponents were Cromwell and Milton, met licentiousness and corrupted loyalty, with Charles II. and Wycherley for representatives. Cromwell was "Puritanism armed and in power;" Milton was its apostle and poet. Charles II. was kingcraft besotted; Wycherley its jester and pimp. Cromwell--farmer, preacher, soldier, party leader, prince--radical, stern, hopeful; Charles--debauchee, persecuting skeptic, faithless ruler; Milton--lofty in his Paradise; Wycherley--nasty in his Love in a Wood, and Country Wife. "A larger soul never dwelt in a house of clay," said one who had been much about Cromwell, after his death, when flattery was mute. "Old Goat" was the name given to Charles by one who knew him best. Cromwell, "after all his battles and storms, and all the plots of assassins against his life, died of grief at the loss of his favorite daughter, and of watching at her side." Charles went out of life in a fit, the result of his horrible excesses, if not of poison,--as said and believed by many, administered by one of his own numerous mistresses. First, "the Puritans," says Macaulay, "interdicted, under heavy penalties, the use of the Book of Common Prayer, not only in churches, but in private houses. It was a crime in a child to read by the bedside of a sick parent one of those beautiful collects which had soothed the griefs of forty generations of Christians. Severe punishments were denounced against such as should presume to blame the Calvinistic mode of worship. Clergymen of respectable character were not only ejected from their benefices by thousands, but were frequently exposed to the outrages of a fanatical rabble. Churches and sepulchres, fine works of art and curious remains of antiquity, were brutally defaced. The Parliament resolved that all pictures in the royal collection which contained representations of Jesus or of the Virgin Mother should be burned. Sculpture fared as ill as painting. Nymphs and graces, the work of Ionian chisels, were delivered over to Puritan stone-masons to be made decent. Against the lighter vices the ruling faction waged war with a zeal little tempered by humanity or by common-sense. Public amusements, from the masks which were exhibited at the mansions of the great down to the wrestling matches and grinning matches on village greens, were vigorously attacked. One ordinance directed that all the May-poles in England should forthwith be hewn down. One of the first resolutions adopted by Barebone's Parliament was that no person should be admitted into the public service till the house should be satisfied with his real godliness."